This invention relates generally to social networking, and in particular to suggesting gift giving between users of social networking systems.
People often present gifts to their loved ones and acquaintances, including, friends, family, or colleagues on various occasions for example, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and the like. Often, people organize events to be celebrate special occasions in which gifts for a person may be presented to that person, for example, birthday parties, baby showers, weddings, and so on. People may also make contribution to present an expensive gift that may exceed the budget of any one of the contributors. As a result, celebrating special occasions and presenting gifts can be a complex social event requiring extensive preparation and coordination between various parties.
Vendors of products and services that provide articles relevant to special occasions, for example, articles that can be presented as gifts would like to be able to promote their products and services to the various parties involved in the these special occasions. Being able to present their products to the right party at the right time could substantially increase the chances that the vendor is able to sell their products and services. Conventional promotional methods used by vendors include billboards, television broadcasts, and newspaper or magazine advertisements. However, these mass media promotional methods advertise products to a wide variety of individuals, who may or may not be interested in the products. As a result, a typical viewer of the advertisement may ignore the advertisement. Significant amount of advertising efforts of vendors gets directed towards people that do not have an immediate interest in the products services. Merchants can improve the effectiveness of their advertising by targeting it towards those individuals who are likely to be interested in, and therefore are likely to purchase, their products.
Social networking systems store social information about users, including their social profiles and social interactions. The power of social networking has not been exploited towards helping connect vendors offering various products and services to parties involved in various special occasions of people. The ability to exploit social information would allow vendors to target their advertisements and product information in a more focused manner towards parties that are more likely to purchase their products and services. Since networking systems can charge vendors for providing the appropriate social information that helps vendors sell their products, social networks can derive revenues from the vendors. Furthermore, since networking systems can provide special services benefitting users of the networking systems involved in these special occasions, users are more likely to use the networking systems, and visit the networking systems on a regular basis. This increases user loyalty towards particular networking systems that may provide these features.